The Revenge of Conan's Beard

The first question for Conan O'Brien on "60 Minutes" tonight, in his first interview since leaving "The Tonight Show," was about his beard.

"That first day that I woke up and was no longer the host of 'The Tonight Show,] I remember the first thought I had is: I am not shaving. And that was my small victory, you know. OK, so I lost 'The Tonight Show' but I'll show them! I'll stop shaving!"

In the interview, correspondent Steve Kroft goes out to Seattle to attend one of the live appearances. And Kroft tries to get him to talk aobut the pain of being bumped from 11:35 by Jay Leno, who had failed at 10 p.m.

"I remembered thinking that seemed like-- that was a stretch even for me ," O'Brien says. The swiftness at which he was being moved fro mthe slot made him uncomfortable. "when it started to get toxic and I started to feel that I'm not sure these people even really want me here," he said, he came to his conclusion: "I can't do it."

O'Brien's wife Liza is in the report as well. "This was just really, really hard for him," she says. "It was watching someone's heart get broken."

"I'm laughing 'cause crying would be sad," Conan says at one point.

"From my perspective, it felt like they never really gave him the job," Liza O'Brien says. " That they said, 'We're going to give you this job in five years,' and they kept him with the company, and he said, 'I won't go anywhere else, and I'll keep working for you, and I'm in it for the long haul.' And It felt like they lost their nerve to really make a change, and that was too bad. It was a shame, 'cause it would've been great to see what he could've done if he had had their full support and had some more time."

She was speaking in the segment in part because he legally couldn't speak of NBC because of a non-disparagement agreement ("I keep one in my wallet," Conan says).

Yet he said he wouldn't respond any differently if there was no such clause; the fact that he would have responded differently than Leno did to the situation is about as far as he would go.And only briefly do they mention his next gig: a late night show on TBS.

"I do not look down my nose at cable," O'Brien says. "And I think anyone who does isn't paying attention to television these days. 'Cause it is-- this world is changing very quickly."

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Roger Catlin is TV critic for the Hartford Courant and writes a daily column about what's on television called TV Eye. He is also on the board of the Television Critics Association. Before all of this, he was rock critic ... read more